The Last Imperial Fleet
by Fabius Maximus
Summary: The Virgon Imperial Navy is but a shadow of what it once was...but when all other fleets fall, the fleet must protect the memory of Virgon and te Colonies. Takes place in the "Pirate King" story setting.
1. Chapter 1

_One thing many people miss when reading of our glorious unification against the cylon threat is that the last _major_ colonial conflict occurred barely four years before the war, and there were continual skirmishes. While the Colonial Navy was formed in order to produce a unified military organization against the cylons, the various Colonial forces played a major role. More importantly, even after the conflict, few Colonies were interested in completely disarming and putting their faith in a Colonial Navy. However well it had done against the cylons, there were serious questions as to whether it would be able to keep the peace in the postwar era. _

_In fact, a major goal of the Colonial Government has been to gradually reduce these forces, starting by restricting the tonnage of new ships and forbidding the possession of nuclear weapons by these forces. Conversely, the independent military forces have argued that the fleet's focus on large battlestars and preparing for a cylon incursion makes it necessary to maintain robust forces to deal with pirates and other dangers. However, it seems likely that President Adar will be able to continue putting pressure on member Colonial governments to reduce and eventually eliminate their national forces…_

_A Survey of Colonial Military Organizations, Caprica Press, one year before the Fall. _

* * *

One Week Before the Fall: Coris System

Royal Virgon Warship _Imperator Typhon: Task Force 12_

"Admiral on deck!" The call rang through the warship's CIC as Admiral Javin Lamb walked in and returned the salute of the captain.

"What's our status, Captain?"

"On track for rendezvous with the task force sir," Captain Wilma Tavish was a willowy redhead who like Lamb, had chosen to leave the Colonial Fleet in order to enter the service of her home Colony. In Wilma's case it had been an issue involving a higher ranked admiral who essentially ensured she'd never achieve command rank. In Lamb's case, it had been family— as a cadet branch of the Virgon Royal family, he was expected to transfer back to his home service.

"Good. Ship's condition?"

"At Condition 2, as per your orders."

"Excuse me sir?"

Lamb sighed at the voice.

"Yes, Ms. Connel?"

"Isn't keeping the ship at condition 2 hard on the men?"

Suddenly, everyone else in the CIC was very intent on their work. Lamb smiled at that. Not that he'd take it out on them, but traditionally, asking dumb questions of an admiral, especially dumb questions that implied the _Admiral_ was dumb, tended to result in a certain amount of danger to innocent bystanders.

"Ms. Conners…while the Colonies have been at peace for over four decades, the Coris system is… not so tranquil. There are pirates and criminal groups, many of whom would not scruple to launch a surprise attack. Our ships are good, but they are not battlestars, and as such cannot absorb the punishment a battlestar can… For that reason, it is wise to remain at condition 2 until we have gathered the task force." He paused, "that is especially true given our current duties."

"I see!" the blond reporter said in a chirpy voice the felt like nails on a chalkboard and went off to bother someone else.

"Are they really that stupid sir?" The captain asked in a low voice.

"Please, Captain Tavish," Javin chided, "We must always have respect for our members of the press."

Wilma didn't even bother to dignify _that_ with a comment.

In a more serious tone, Javin continued, "And it's also important to understand that our good reporter is part of the segment that wants to know why Virgon is wasting so much money on a fleet when we have our brave boys and girls in blue."

_And the answer is, the fleet doesn't _want_ to be involved here. _Even 40 years of peace hadn't ended many of the conflicts between various groups and even Colonies, and the Sydon system was an example of that. A number of major corporations had fought over the prizes in the system, and a year ago it had gotten so bad that many of hte workers had actually been withdrawn back to the Colonies in the face of accidents and pirate raids.

Unfortunately, the _last_ thing the Adar Administration (or anyone else) wanted was for a Colonial battlestar to blow up a ship that turned out to be from a specific Colony and it looked very likely that one or more Colonies were directly involved in this issue, or at least sufficiently major corporations that the difference was moot.

_Cue Virgon, which isn't, at least as far as I or anyone in ONI knows, involved in this ratfuck. _

Which meant that Virgon could play the savior _and_ justify its fleet to a voting block that increasingly wanted to cut back what seemed to be an overly expensive luxury.

_Which explains why most of our fleet is in this system. _

"Jump emergency signature!" A rating called out and the entire CIC tensed. A close range jump was a risky, but potentially very high payoff tactic for an attacker… "Confirming IFF— it's Commodore Wilson's ships." The tension vanished as the crew gave a subdued cheer.

Lamb nodded, looking at the various icons on the CIC screen. His battlecruiser, more popularly called a pocket battlestar, held station at center of the formation, with the three other Virgon carriers taking up their positions right behind it. Nine _Prince Dalyn_ class heavy cruisers held station on them, with the logistics group hanging back with four military support freighters, a fleet repair ship and the two Army transports. Finally, bringing up the rear was the fleet tender _Dream of Virgon_, which was going to play a major role in his strategy.

The might of Virgon— or at least the dim memory of the might of Virgon. There had been a time when _Imperator Typhon_ would have been only one of a dozen flagships, instead of the largest ship in the fleet. For that matter, the entire Virgon navy would be steamrollered by even a small part of the Colonial Fleet.

_By the time I retire it'll be nothing but customs cutters._ Which wouldn't bother the increasingly powerful Colonial government. Few civilians considered it, but destroyers and cutters were fine for intimidating criminals— but helpless against real warships. That's why there were so few destroyers in the Colonial Fleet— why spend money (and put crew) on something that could be vaporized by a single fighter launched nuke?

"It doesn't matter," he murmured to himself. Whatever the future held, he was the admiral in charge, and he would carry out his duties. "Captain, put me on please. General address, all ships."

"Yes sir."

"Men and women of the Imperial Virgon Fleet!" he said, "Our duty is clear. For the next six months we will patrol this system and ensure that the disruptions and criminal activity that have threatened the civilian workers cease. The Colonial Fleet claims that their shiny battlestars are needed elsewhere. You and I know better— the Fleet is worried about getting it's shiny ships scuffed up, so they're leaving it to us to do the real work while they look pretty." There was a chuckle at that, and Javin paused. "I won't kid you. This is going to be boring. This system was only opened up two years ago and there's very little here, especially with the fighting making everyone stay away. We'll have to make our own entertainment, and I expect you will remember the most important part of being a loyal soldier of Virgon…don't do it in the hallways and scare the daggits." The laughter was louder. "That is all."

Putting the mic down, he turned to Tavish. "Captain, confirm our flag meeting with the captains and the Commodore, and make certain to alert me 30 minutes before…I've got the Gods' own nightmare of paperwork to get finished.

"Yes sir."

TBC

* * *

Author's notes:

This is in the same universe as the Pirate King, although the two forces won't be running into each other. No matter how good the cylons are, 25 billion people who have been in space for at least 500 years (the official map of the colonies talks about conflicts over asteroid belts that have been going on for "centuries"), would be very hard to kill off, especially given how ubiquitous FTL seems to be. We don't see it in the official series because Bill Adama was getting the heck out of dodge (and even when they came back, they only landed on one small part of one planet, rescuing resistance fighters who were largely footbound).

Member Colony Militaries:

One thing that seldom gets noted is that the Colonies weren't united before the first cylon war. In fact, they'd been fighting wars, both of the full scale and the police action variety. I find it very difficult to believe that such a situation, especially given the tensions that are referred to in the series, would see the instant abolition of local military forces. Rather, you'd have a slot process of scaling them back, from the mighty fleets of yore to single task forces.


	2. Disaster

_Gunstars: _

_The term "gunstar" is actually an unofficial term, for all that it has been used in official correspondence. In general, a gunstar is a capital ship, usually at least as large as the smaller battlestars, which focuses more on direct firepower rather than utilizing its fighter squadrons as the primary striking arm. Unfortunately, the question of just what ships should be considered gunstars is one that is more often than not in the eye of the beholder. More pragmatically, the perceived discrimination against non-battlestar command slots in the Colonial Navy has led to a concerted, and currently successful campaign to avoid making the term "gunstar" an official method of distinction…_

_"Where Are the Gunstars? A Discussion of Semantics" _Virgon Defense Weekly.

* * *

Lamb was working in his quarters when the call came. The last several days had been…as boring as he had expected. Few pirates were willing to tangle with warships for perhaps the most important reason of all: pirates needed to pay their own bills and nobody made money tangling with a warship. Unfortunately, that led to the type of bordom that could get people killed, so Javin was working up some proposals for fleet drills with prizes for the best ship, section and individual duty shift.

Javin had just reached out to grab a sandwich from the side of his desk when the intercom gave the atonal priority squeal.

"Lamb here, what is it?"

"Sir, we're seem some odd activity."

"Pirates?

"Negative. Colonial. The Third Battle Squadron just jumped out.

"Did they com us?"

"No. And what's more, we've got a squadron of vipers inbound— they didn't wait for their vipers to get back."

Javin went cold. There were very, very few things that would motivate a commander to leave his pilots to the mercy of other, especially non-Colonial, ships. None of them were good.

"On my way. Order the fleet to Condition 2 until we know what's going on."

"Yessir."

As Javin headed for the CIC, the subdued Condition Two alarm started. Not action stations, but major compartments would be sealed, and one of the off duty shifts would report for duty… most importantly a ship at Condition Two would be able to go to Condition One in less than _half_ the time it would take to get to Condition One from a standing start.

By the time he got to the CIC, Wilma had several print outs for him.

"Wish we had the FTL network set up here," Javin muttered as he grabbed the printouts.

The Colonies accepted the ability to talk to Virgon from Caprica in real time as a fact of life, not realizing that it was due to a vast network that had been nearly a century in the making. FTL was based on the same theories that allowed ships to travel faster than light, adapted to stationary transmitters. The problem was that they had to be painstakingly calibrated to the point that even Colonial Battlestars FTL systems weren't good for more than a few light minutes. Sensors were even harder, which made keeping watch on the Colonial space very difficult. So the majority of the FTL coms were handled by FLTCOM and its civilian counterpart. Big fixed stations in orbit and on the planet transmitted to a network of deep space buoys which in term transmitted to any ships within several light minutes. Better yet, FLTCOM was tied to gigantic sensor stations, which could, in theory, detect even a small FTL emergence signature.

Unfortunately, The cost of "wiring" an entire solar system made the price of a battlestar look reasonable and for that reason the Coris system was still very dependent on couriers and drones.

_Which would have made it a bit polite if the good admiral could have told us what got his pants on fire._

The print outs showed other signs— FTL flares from where other Colonial fleet units were. Granted, they weren't here to help him, but Javin had kept them under observation and for them to go…

"Ready a raptor for messenger duty to Picon. Let's see if they'll tell us what is going on."

"Yes sir."

"And get those viper pilots on board."

"Understood sir-" Wilma paused as the CIC indicator changed. "We've got two bogies, just jumped in behind the vipers."

"IFF?"

"None."

Javin grabbed the speaker. "Colonial squadron this is Admiral Lamb. Care to tell us what's going on?"

"We've been ordered to rendezvous with you sir." The pilots voice was staticky. "There's an all call for ships— we were to far out to get the full squirt but it was priority one."

"And those fellows behind you?"

"Not ours. We're going to stop and intercept."

"Understood. I'll send our CAP out after you." Javin nodded to Wilma who immediately started giving orders. On the fringe of the fleet, the six icons for their MK-III vipers turned and headed for the viper squadron and the approaching bogies.

"Sound Action Stations, all ships." Javin said quietly. Moments later the alert klaxon sounded and the crew started rushing to their stations. The CIC screen showed the carriers launching their alert vipers— instead of a six viper CAP, no fewer than 24 vipers would be launched and in the air at all times.

"Virgon this is Helix," the lead pilot called. "The Colonials are heading for the bogies… wait one." There was a pause, then. "Just picked up their short range chatter— the bogies appear to be cylon. I repeat, the bogies appear to be cylons."

"Understood. Any communication from them?"

"Negative-wait…we're being painted by some sort of communications beam…it's not a targeting system…" Suddenly the pilots voice cut off and then returned, very clipped. "Sir, the Colonial squadron just went off the air in mid chatter— their craft are not maneuvering and I'm hearing nothing. Cylon craft are increasing speed."

"Shoot them down. Now." Javin said. "Weapons free."

"Understood."

The crew watched the CIC as the cylons continued to drive for the Colonial vipers which appeared to be simply coasting straight in.

_What is going on… _Javin couldn't imagine any malfunction that would knock out all the vipers at once…and why were the cylons ignoring his own vipers?

Suddenly, the CIC screen went red with missile launch alerts. Moments later, his own vipers launched their own missiles, hoping to protect the still silent Colonial vipers. That seemed to surprise the cylon ships but it was too late as the six vipers descended on them and moments later, there were only human ships on the screen.

"Sir, we lost three of the Colonial vipers, but we're getting sign language from one of them— they've suffered a complete computer failure."

"Understood," Javin said.

"Sir-a raptor just jumped in with this message." The rating was visibly trembling.

Javin took the printout from her.

TO ALL VIRGONIAN NAVY SHIPS

CYLON FORCES HAVE ENGAGED COLONIAL DEFENSE FORCES. NUMEROUS REPORTS OF SHIP AND GROUND BASED DEFENSE SYSTEM MALFUNCTIONS, POSSIBLY DUE TO SABOTAGE. ALL SHIPS TO RETURN TO VIRGON FOR DEFENSE AND EVACUATION DUTIES. REPORTS OF NUDETS: CAPRICA CITY, PICON DEFENSE HEAD QUARTERS, SCORPIA FLEET YARDS. NUMEROUS OTHER STRATEGIC RANGE DETONATIONS REPORTED, TARGETING BOTH CIVILIAN AND MILITARY TARGETS (SEE ATTACHED SHEET). ALL FORCES ARE TO GO TO WAR FOOTING DELTA ONE.

Javin put the document down. "All ships on coms."

"Yessir." Wilma said.

"To all ships. The Cylons have engaged in a full scale attack on our homes, utilizing nuclear weapons. We will be jumping back to Virgon to aid in the defense. All ships report readiness for jump." He turned back to Wilma. "I want a raptor primed to go to every planet and major fleet grouping— I want a continual loop about the Cylon's ability to interfere with electronic systems. It's likely software related."

"Yes sir."

TBC.


	3. Flight

_THE SCATTERING:_

_The destruction of the Twelve Colonies by the cylons (see also: Baltar Virus) resulted in the dispersal of the survivors across the known galaxy. The fact that the Colonies possessed a mature space faring civilization with near ubiquitous knowledge of FTL was one that was overlooked by the cylons, or more specifically the humanoid cylons (see also: Humanoid Cylon Psychology). In fact, the cylon holocaust, far from destroying humanity, set the stage for humanity's current spread across the galaxy. Even today, new settlements, seedlings cast upon the winds generated by that long ago holocaust continue to be found…_

_Cambridge University Encyclopedia 2320AD (370 PC) Edition._

* * *

_"Fleet is prepared to jump, sir." _Wilma reported from her station. Javin nodded. Every ship was at action stations and the fleet would jump into the Helios Beta system. Normally, jumping in without first reconnoitering was the sort of reckless decision that got officers cashiered. But in this case, Javin expected that major cylon units would be off engaging the fleet, trying to take advantage of the effect that had shut down the vipers, and according to increasingly hysterical messages from the several raptors that had been sent from Virgon Fleet Command, was doing the same to everything from battlestars to planetary defense networks.

"Final message sir," Wilma said. "All remaining Colonial ships are to rendezvous at Virgon for major fleet action _after _they have purged the CNP program."

"Understood." _Well. Never thought I'd feel lucky that the Fleet was holding the best goodies for its own use. _

"Jump."

Moments later the fleet left the empty system it had come to patrol, to return home.

"I'm getting transmissions from all over the place," the wireless operator said. "Lots of ships, mostly civilian…. Hard to separate out…" her eyebrows knitted, she worked the controls than nodded. "Nagala's ordered all civilian ships away from Virgon…the cylons are concentrating."

"Are any of the planetary defense systems up?"

"Some…" A few moments later, the CIC showed a flickering image from the planetary systems, full of scan artifacts and 'information unreliable' warning signs. But what was happening at Virgon was clear. Fewer than 12 battlestars along with many three times as many lighter craft were attempting to get into formation to meet a force of nearly 45 basestars along with a large number of lighter ships. Worse, most of the battlestars were damaged and those that weren't were maneuvering with the curious sluggishness that told of ships on manual systems that were only intended for the most basic maneuvers. Their flight groups had also been ravaged and Javin wondered how many of those advanced fighters had been destroyed and how many were trapped, their systems shut down by the cylons.

_We had enough firepower to defend ourselves in any conventional engagement. The cylons knew that and so they changed the rules. We were prepared for the last war. Not this war._

Still, his duty was clear. "The fleet will prepare to advance." He quietly said, feeling the fear in the eyes looking at him. "Our ships have not been harmed by the cylon weapon. WE are still organized, and undamaged and we can have an impact all out of proportion to our numbers."

_And then we will die._ If the cylons had a fleet this big here, even if it was to engage the last organized Colonial fleet, they had more ships elsewhere… not that they were likely to need more.

"Sir?" The wireless operator said. "We're receiving a mayday from the Battlestar _Intolerant_. They've lost their escorts and are attempting to protect some civilians but have no functional fighters left."

"I see." Javin said. "We cannot detach any ships to go-"

"Sir…I'm receiving another message. Virgon Prime."

Javin felt his spine straighten even now. The Emperor might seem like a quaint anachronism to most, but all Virgon officers swore allegiance to the throne.

"Javin, is that you?" The voice he remembered well from occasions both personal and official sounded stressed, a babble of sound behind it speaking to the panic in the deep shelters under the palace.

"Yes your Majesty."

"Good, what are your intentions."

"I am going to join with Admiral Nagala."

"No. No you are not."

Absolute silence filled the CIC.

"But sir, if the cylons destroy his fleet, they will be free to bombard Virgon." _Our Home!_

_"_The cylons are free to do that right now— they could jump their raiders down into the atmosphere and launch. They did that on some other worlds, but even if they do it the old fashioned way… we figured out the problem, but too late, too late."

"Sir-"

"Javin…the only reason the Capital is still intact is that they want to pin Nagala down defending it and kill him. Now fortunately, other ships have survived and as far as we can tell some of them are running or hiding, but standing and fighting is suicide."

"My fleet-"

"Will kill many cylons and will die gloriously, only there won't be anyone left to write the history… Listen Javin, we don't have much time. I have ordered the planetary defense squadron to start picking up refugees." There was a chuckle over the wireless. "Someone over at Leonis got the same idea and detached a number of transports to schools and other places. I can't let the Leonians steal a march, now can I, so I've ordered the same thing." There was a pause. "We won't, I'm sorry to say, get as many as our people out. The Cylons have too many fighters and many of the ships were killed on the ground or in transit."

_And what am I to do?_

As if reading his mind, the Emperor continued, "Admiral, you are now, by the act of the Emperor and all surviving members of the Parliament, CINC of all Virgon forces. You are to retrieve our people, and as many other ships as you can, and you are to find a place of safety. This is my final order, and you will accept no further orders from me. You are _not_ to attempt to retrieve my person— if the cylons detect that you can be certain they'll fall upon you. Gods go with you Admiral…as do all of our hopes and my legacy."

"I understand sir." There was nothing else to say. "_Imperator Typhon_ Actual out."

He put the hand set back down and met his crew's gaze. "The fleet will divide. We will take the first division and rescue the _Intolerant_ and its ships. The rest of the fleet will conduct rescue operations…those operations are to cease when the cylons…" _finish murdering Nagala_, "… are free to engage our forces. Our Rally point will be Alpha-23." _One that was never shared with the Colonials. _

* * *

The _Intolerant_ was dying, Captain Allana Reese knew. The only reason the cylons hadn't killed it yet was that they had focused on destroying the helpless escorts. But barely 20 percent of _Intolerant's _KEW batteries were operational and the worm kept popping up. They could purge it, if they could afford to shut the entire battlestar down for an hour…but they had no such luck.

_Better luck than our fighters… _she bitterly thought. The entire understrength airgroup had been wiped out, helpless vipers slaughtered by missiles and cannon fire. The two basestars were hanging back, letting their raiders wear down the ship.

_That might indicate they can't replace the basestars easily…_

Not that it would make any difference. The dying FLTCOM network made it plain— Admiral Nagala was dying hard, but he was dying.

_Beyond the range of the battlestar's weapons, even if it had been able to use them, the two base stars waited. They would destroy this ship and then leisurely sweep up the remaining survivors. In fact-_

"Jump Complete sir!" Wilma said.

Javin nodded. "Primary batteries on target Alpha, all secondaries and cruiser cannons on Beta."

_Imperator_ was built to traditional Virgon designs, which was to focus on ship to ship battle. While it had an underslung fighter bay and a considerable fighter complement, the ship's true teeth were in its heavy cannon. Three forward mounted KEW cannon hurled their projectiles, little more than guided slugs of iron at a nearly inconceivable speed at the first basestar. The first round missed. But the second round smashed through one of the arms, separating it and setting off secondary explosions. The third, smashed into the central axis of the ship, tearing through it's command spaces and killing the hybrid. The burning, dying ship fell out of formation.

The other basestar was hardly doing better. The two escorting cruisers were focusing all their firepower on it and while their coaxil cannon were weaker than the _Imperator's_ they were more numerous and added to the faster firing turreted guns, the base star was soon burning from a dozen rents.

_They don't have any direct fire weapons— just missiles, _Javin thought. It made sense, given their emphasis on fighters, but put them at a grave weakness in a ship to ship engagement.

"FTL disabled," Wilma reported.

"Thank you captain," Javin said, watching as the task groups fighters swept into the disorganized cylon raiders. Some raiders turned on his fighters, while others continued to drive for the _Intolerant, _now being savaged from several directions at once.

"Get me the CO of the battlestar."

"This is Captain Reese."

"Are you the highest ranking officer?"

"Yes sir. The Captain and the XO were killed before the attack."

"What? How?"

"An infiltrator murdered them," she replied voice slightly shaking. "We killed him, but by that time the attack had begun and our computers were shut down."

"Well, I am collecting survivors, I think you need to come with me-"

"Sir, we were answering an all call for ships to support Admiral Nagala-" While the captain continued, Wilma handed Javin a note, her hands shaking slightly.

"I'm afraid Admiral Nagala is dead," Javin said, looking at the print out.

ADMIRAL NAGALA KILLED. CYLON FORCES HAVE COMMENCED BOMBARDING VIRGON. CONTACT LOST WITH CAPITAL AFTER AT LEAST FOUR, RPT FOUR MEGATON RANGE NUCLEAR DETONATIONS NEAR PALACE COMPLEX.

There was dead silence on the other side.

"Captain, you can die, or we can live. My last orders were to evacuate as many Virgonese citizens as possible and get away. I don't know what we're going to do, but I do know that rescuing you meant some Virgon civilians are dead now. What are you going to do?"

"I'll… assist you until I can get in contact with higher authority."

_Which are all dead._

"Very well."

_This leaves the issue of who would murder a ship's commander before the war started... Cylon cultists?_ Javin thought. It would explain how they had infiltrated the fleet, but even so…

_"_Sir? _Intolerant _reports that their FTL drives are ready, although they had to physically separate them from the network. It will take somewhat longer to purge the entire system. The rest of the fleet has started withdrawing from Virgon." Wilma's mouth twisted. "The cylons appear to be occupied with the capital region—some of the planetary defense centers are still active."

_And will die as we abandon them. _

"Very well. Withdraw to the rally point."

Later, Javin watched as the ships straggled in. He'd sent out raptors and seadragon cutters to attempt to obtain more ships. Boxy freighters and sleek liners had come in, but not many. All too many had been slaughtered as the Cylons concentrated their forces to destroy the last Colonial Fleet. With the exception of a single heavy cruiser, no other Colonial ships had made it. Javin hoped that some of them had simply moved to other areas.

"Planetary defense squadron arriving."

Javin looked up at the CIC. Another carrier, bringing the number of Virgonese dedicated carriers to four, lead the flotilla, atmosphere escaping from damaged armor. Two cruisers and three heavy transports followed it, with a single military support freighter bringing up the rear. Around them were a dozen or so civilian ships and lastly there was another flare and…

_Courage of Virgon _survived? The sleek warship represented one of the last attempts of the Virgon navy to keep pace with the Colonial Fleet. It was damaged, that much was plain, but evidently the cylons had been concerned with Nagala's fleet and had let it go.

_"Courage _Actual-" Javin started, but was cut off.

"Negative, Flag. This is _Virgon Prime._"

_The hells?_

"The Emperor is aboard?"

"Negative. The Emperor is Dead. Long Live the Empress."

TBC


	4. Chatting With the Empress

_Courage of Virgon was one of the Virgon Defense Force's last attempts to try and maintain the primacy of regular fleets. It was also an attempt to capture military ship building contracts from Picon and other worlds. Although a number of Virgonese design traits found their way into Colonial warships, it failed on the first count. The cost of the warship nearly bankrupted the Virgon Defense Forces budget and while both maneuverable and somewhat more powerful than a _Valkyrie _class battlestar, the Courage of Virgon was no match for the Jupiter class or any later heavy designs. More importantly, the cost proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that no single government could hope to match Colonial military budgets and so the Courage remained a single class ship, contributing to the decision of most other Colonial Defense Forces to repeat such an attempt. _

_The Virgon Pocket Carrier design, often called "baby battlestars" proved more popular. Less expensive, while these designs were not picked up by the Colonial Navy, their combination of relatively low cost and combat and support capabilities led to them becoming a popular choice as the "flagships" for local defense fleets and even some private military contractors (PMCs) who were active in the outer regions. In fact, long after the cylons had effectively destroyed the Colonial Navy as an organized force, many smaller bands of ships fled or continued to resist, sheltering under the protective wings of these small but redoubtable warships…_

_A History of the Colonial Fleet: Glory to Destruction and Beyond. United Nations Defense Force Press, 2020. _

* * *

Javin watched as the shuttle closed on_ Virgon Prime_ as the ship was described now. The commander had been coy in mentioning exactly _what_ member of the royal family had survived, and Javin heartily agreed. He'd told the commander to watch for potential infiltrators.

_And who the hells would have imagined that humans would decide to turn against their own people._

More importantly, _why?_ What could the cylons offer? If they had been intent on conquest, it would make sense— Virgon's imperial phase showed that you needed supporters among the conquered peoples, but that was conquest, not genocide…so their human allies were either functionally insane, religious fanatics, ignorant or some mixture of the three. And that made them more dangerous than ever— just look at the ones who had infiltrated _Intolerant._ They had no fear, none whatsoever, of death. Unfortunately, the ship that Javin was approaching had no answer to those questions, although it had a comforting quality all its own.

_Virgon Prime_ had been designed and built by the best architects of the Virgon shipyards, and had a more sleek look than most other warships. Advanced cannon and CIWS systems studded the hull as the port bay yawned before them.

_I shouldn't be doing this._

Right now, Wilma and the other commanders were trying to find out exactly who they had rescued. Taking a cue from the Leonis situation, the Emperor had ordered ships to land at areas where there would be few Cylons and concentrated groups to rescue, but unlike Leonis, the cylons had increasingly sent raiders to hunt down those ships as the battlestars died one after another. All too many rescue ships fell back onto the atmosphere as shattered hulks. Others were crammed so full they were risking complete life support failure.

And then there was the Colonial component— the battlestar and single heavy cruiser might be outnumbered by the rest of the fleet, but they were Colonial ships and legally, Javin had no right to command them. He would have to deal with that soon.

_And quickly. _If it had been up to Javin, they might stay around…but not with the civilians. Civilian ships weren't warships and their hulls were designed to protect their passengers against the vacuum of space and do it at the minimum possible weight cost. They weren't designed to protect from cannon fire and nukes and a single raider could slaughter the civilian ships with ease.

_More importantly, what can we do? Raid? Kill a few ships until we ourselves die?_

No. The order had not been for vengeance, but for survival. Javin would carry it out.

Somehow.

"Admiral." The commander of the ship said with respect as Javin emerged from the shuttle. Javin nodded to him.

"Where is the Empress?"

"In her quarters." The _Courage_ had a suite for the royal family, but in deference to tradition it was a far more austere suit than the royal yacht— in fact little more than the admiral got. Still, it was private and he needed privacy.

"Sir…Empress Celea is… not happy."

_Empress Celea?_ He'd expected one of the older children-

"How many others of the royal family made it out?"

"None sir. There were conventional attacks on the palace and the routes in and out of the city…" the commander trailed off.

"Understood. And the Empress?"

"She was in the country working on her school project… I believe it had something to do with hybridizing grain."

"I see."

"Ah…sir, she didn't want to leave her family or the world…and so I, well…"

"Yes?"

"Compelled her to board the shuttle."

"Compelled? How? "

"I tasered her."

"In the stories, we traditionally use a right cross."

"The stories don't explore the possibility of a broken jaw."

"Good point."

Javin nodded at the captain and saluted the two guards standing at the door.

_I hope I don't have to violate her privacy by having someone in with her,_ he thought. The fleet couldn't survive a suicidal Empress so it might come to that. Still…

_Celea has a certain amount of mental fortitude. _

"Empress?" Javin said through the intercom. "This is Admiral Lamb. Forgive me for interrupting your mourning, but we must speak."

"Come in, Admiral." If the voice had the sound of someone with a stuffed nose, it was clear and strong. That at least was comforting.

Javin opened the door and walked into the sitting room. Celea was standing in the middle of the room, looking at the place where her mother had often put the carrier for the family cat.

"The crew hated that cat," Celea said softly. "But bless them, they never let mom know— I suppose both are dead now."

"Yes, Your Highness," Javin said. "The city was totally destroyed."

"Was it fast?"

"I… believe it was. The multiple explosions were ground detonations and the shelter almost certainly would have been destroyed." _Better than being buried alive or slowly roasting at least._

"Good. I wonder…if there are any cats here?"

"Your Highness?"

"I'm not going crazy…it's just that the children here may never see a cat again. This morning when I was leaving for my high school project, the news was talking about the need to spay and neuter…and now they may be gone." She sighed, "If I think about the people, I'll go crazy, so I'll start with the small tragedies first."

"Prioritizing?"

"Remember dad? Start with the small things if the big things are too intimidating— either way you're moving forward." There was a catch in her throat and then she flung herself on Javin. "Oh Uncle Javin…they're all dead— not just dad, but everyone!"

"I know, Celea," Javin said, "But at least you are not and we need to talk about that… Your Highness."

"Don't-"

"I can't spare you that— the fleet is in shock and more importantly, they have no leadership."

"They have you."

"Unless they are from that small subset of Virgonians who loved the royal military, they probably don't even know my name. They do know the youngest daughter of the royal family."

_Especially if they're teenagers._

Celea wasn't the tallest of her family, but she had a statuesque beauty about her that combined with a sense of maturity that had made her very popular…and had enabled her to handle that popularity better than some of her siblings. Not to speak ill of the dead, but Jen, her older sister was a pleasant non-entity who would have been utterly disastrous in this situation. Granted, Celea's passion, ecological engineering, wasn't likely to provide much direct assistance, but the girl had shown the ability to master a difficult field by her own efforts.

"Remember the nude photos?" Javin asked.

"Oh Gods…" Celea blushed as the memory of the Caprican photographer who had managed to slip through her cordon and get pictures of Celea at a nude beach. The nudity hadn't been a problem, but Virgon society had firm notions about the respect due the royal family.

_And the fact that she was fifteen might have also had something to do with it._

"I was actually thinking of the press conference," Javin said. "You looked like you were going to puke behind the stage but you didn't show it during the conference."

"I couldn't. There were people calling for that idiots head— they _bombed_ the _Caprica Times_ news office and they hadn't even been involved."

"You'll have to do the same here. The people need you, more than ever."

"I know." She laughed softly. "Well, at least I don't have to worry about the other."

"Other?"

"I'm blond, pale and don't tan well… in addition to getting my privates shown over half the system, I also manged to burn myself in sensitive places…"

"Ah."

Celea gestured to a seat. "I know you don't have a lot of time, but what is the plan? Do we even _have_ a plan?"

"Running. The cylons dominate the system and since their raiders have FTL drives they can do a very good job of searching for us."

"And survivors in space or on the planets?"

"It's a no win situation— if we try and get them, we either commit our entire fleet, and likely lose it, or risk them being killed by a single raider as they gather… without any battlestars to worry about, the cylons don't have to keep their fleet concentrated. On world survivors would be better off hiding and I think most off world ships have scattered. We sent raptors out, but didn't find much."

"What about the fleet?"

"We have had very little— the cylons evidently knew all about FLTCOM and left it up just long enough to collect the fleet for their attack— we got a garbled message about Commander Adama rallying all fleet ships to him at Ragner Anchorage. Thee were unconfirmed reports of other ships, both government and military, conducting their own rescue operations and I presume most of them have made the same decision we did."

"Should we join Commander Adama?"

"No. I've deployed a raptor force, but…Celea, we _can't_ win this. I don't know if Adama only has _Galactica _or other battlestars have joined him but at this point the war is over. We have lost. If he intends to continue the war, he's committing suicide. Honorable suicide, maybe, but suicide nonetheless."

"I see." Celea paused and looked at an expensive print of the now destroyed royal palace. "I'll have to put together a speech, but first let's see what the raptors find. Also, I'm assuming we don't know what we have yet."

"I was in the process-"

"Then what are you doing here, Uncle Javin?"

"Comforting the daughter of my friend."

"I am…comforted…as much as anyone can be. Dad always respected you and regretted that he couldn't stay in the service." Celea said softly. Then she frowned. "But you have work to do and so do I. Send Commander Larson in— he's been hiding from me."

"Since he tased you?"

"Yes. I'm going to have to forgive him or smack him with a flower pot."

"Competent Commanders are rare on the ground right now."

"Forgive him then. We probably don't have a lot of flower pots either."

TBC


	5. Rescue and Dishonor

_Maneuver is life in space combat. Even the most powerful battlestar can fall to nuclear strikes and FTL craft can emerge very close to a stationary object. For the best possible safety, a fleet should always be under thrust, and frequently relocate itself using short range FTL jumps. Unfortunately, this drastically increases fuel usage, maintenance and crew fatigue…_

_Elementary Principles of Naval Combat, an introductory text at the Colonial Naval Academy_

* * *

Fall+2 days.

Less than an hour later, Javin was on course for the _Intolerant _in his shuttle. The fleet had jumped twice in that interval, staying within a light year of the Colonies. A few of the captains worried about that. Javin didn't, or rather it was an acceptable risk. Sometimes even naval officers whose job it was to remember such things didn't fully understand just how vast a volume even a single light year encompassed.

The jumps had delayed their ability to survey the ships, but having a dozen nuclear armed raiders pop out into the middle of the fleet would have resulted in a considerably longer delay. The printouts being sent to Javin were sitting in the seat next to him as he went through Wilma's initial findings.

They had 30 civilian ships in the fleet, which seemed impressive, except that at least 18 of the ships were damaged, lacked a reliable FTL or were too fuel inefficient to bring along. Wilma suggested stripping the ships of any needed parts and transferring the civilians to the transport freighters. Javin sent his approval. The civilians would be safer on military ships, even second line ones and the last thing he needed was to have the entire fleet immobilized while they evacuated some ship because its FTL core hadn't been overhauled since it took to the skies.

The other ships she considered vital to the health of the fleet. A Tylium processing and mining ship, one of the thousands of ships that plied the space lanes was of course vital. Given time you could cobble up your own refining system, but a dedicated ship was much faster. An Agro ship, several liners, both luxury and tramp, and some bulk carriers. The last ship was something of a prize— the _Reliant_, an older long-duration cruise ship with an entire enclosed rotating habitat section that would add to their potential growing space. Even better, since it had been commissioned in the days before light radiation shielding had become so common, there were no windows— the entire growing area was armored in sprayed ceramic foam and metal composites. It was not military armor plating, far from it, but the Reliant wouldn't fall apart from a casual strafing run by a raider.

The numbers were less encouraging. They had managed to save less than 30,000 civilians. Too many ships had never made it out of orbit and there hadn't been enough time to rescue those on the ground, save for the very first evacuation points. The only good news was that the civilian numbers skewed young and female, which hopefully indicated that they wouldn't die out if they could find a new home.

_If. Should we? No, you've thought about it again and again and we can't hang around here any longer than absolutely necessary. Getting a few more people won't help if you all die._

As it was, his decision to continue with raptor flights to known rally points and suspected refuges were turning up less and less. Supposedly safe rally points where nothing but the shattered hulks of nuked warships attested to the devastating ambushes that had been sprung on the ships that were hoping to reorganize for a counter strike

_They must have infiltrated the entire Colonial Military._ Perhaps the only thing that had saved them all was the fact that the cylons had evidently caught the Colonial attitude regarding member defense forces.

_Or they may not have had the ability to infiltrate us…let's not make them 10 feet tall, however good a job they're doing. _He knew that from what some of the other raptors had found.

"Coming up on _Intolerant_ sir. They want us to dock in the top hanger."

Outside the bulk of the battlestar _Intolerant_ filled the canopy. From his position, Javin could see the scars where conventional and nuclear strikes had scourged away some of the armor and shattered KEW batteries, but the battlestar remained intact. While only slightly longer than a _Valkyrie_ class battlestar, Intolerant was fatter, with more internal space, and no less than six landing decks— four in _Mercury_ style pods and two on the top and bottom. Cavernous bays and repair shops revealed the true purpose of the _Intolerant_— it was a support ship that could survive an assault with the aid of its fighters, rather than a true line of battle ship.

_And a bit of a command problem… _Hopefully the good Captain Allana Reese would understand that the world was somewhat different now.

After the raptor had landed and was lowered into the hanger, Javin disembarked. The hanger was crowded with emergency crews, some of them working on blast damage where a missile had penetrated, others occupied by repairing the few vipers they'd been able to recover. They had a lot of room— very few of the fighters carried by _Intolerant_ had survived.

"Admiral Lamb." Captain Reese was a trim woman in her early thirties. She extended her hand. "Thank you for your timely rescue."

"The pleasure was ours— but I think we should get to business— is there a briefing room available?"

"Of course sir," she said and gestured for Javin to follow her.

Javin waited until they were in the briefing room, with the sounds of engineering crews penetrating through the ventilators.

"How are the engineering teams I sent working?"

"Very well sir, especially the senior officers. We lost a lot of our officers to the sabotage."

"Do you think you located all of them?"

"I believe so— they didn't exactly try and hide." She frowned, "We have the bodies, or what is left of them, in the morgue."

"Well at least there they can't cause us any trouble…and the ship?"

"Combat capable, but the _Intolerant _was never a line of battle ship."

"I have no intention of using it as such… we need your shops and production facilities, which are more impressive than our military support freighters." Javin leaned back and paused for a moment. "Of course, that opens the question of command."

"Normally, the Colonial Fleet takes precedent…" Reese said, "But in this case, you have such seniority and my ships are so badly damaged, that I would suggest you take command— with the caveat that I am not permanently transferring this ship to your command, especially if we ever meet a functioning Colonial Flag officer."

"Of course not." _Thank the Gods._ Javin had met some Colonial officers who would no more cooperate with a defense force officer than they would walk outside an airlock in their underwear.

"Which brings me to the question of what are we going to do?"

"Initially, we're moving about while we launch more raptor missions to scour the system."

"Do you think we'll find anyone else?"

"We already have," Javin said, "And this doesn't go beyond this room, Captain."

"Of course."

"While I was on the way here, we had our first wave of raptors report in— most of them found nothing. At least nothing living, but three did find something."

"What?"

"Other groups of survivors— some military units, private military corporations, even smugglers."

"Are they going to join us?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They felt that it might make them a larger target…all three groups were leaving the colonies, and from the raptors' information, I think they may be able to make it."

"That's…"

"Something that we must, at least in terms of specifics, keep very secret. If the cylons should capture us, we cannot allow them to know anything that might let them track down these other groups. There may be more of course, It's hard to say, but you'll note I'm not even telling you the composition of their ships or their intended destination— what is never written down or spread by word of mouth, cannot be found out."

"They must be very frightened."

"They are, but I also think they're wise— the might of the cylons can destroy any single group. After all,they didn't have a problem with over 120 battlestars and their support, so you can bet that no fleet of survivors can be victorious if they're tracked down. I wish them luck and when we are well on our way, we'll tell the others in this fleet the general— very general facts. That there are other groups of survivors… should be encouraging to the others. We also have information that is very pertinent to your situation.

"Which is?"

"One of our ships visited Ragnar. The anchorage station has been destroyed, and there were fragments in orbit, but they did manage to recover the body of a viper pilot— she evidently wasn't very good at OPSEC, and so left a note that the fleet was due to jump to the Prolmar Sector in her diary. Last entry. She was from the _Galactica._"

"That's… not a very good lead." Reese said. "Why are we following them if you're not following the other refugees?"

"For one thing, the others didn't want us to follow them. For another… why would the _Galactica_ make such a long jump? They _know_ something. I don't think they're aimlessly wandering. I think Adama is looking for something and let's face it, he's been in long enough that he'd know just about all the Admiralty's secrets…even ones that they didn't write down."

"That's thin."

"That's more than we have right now," Javin said. "We'll stay here for a few more days— I don't think you want to jump _Intolerant _for a long-distance jump until we can be certain there's no frame damage."

"Of course sir."

The next several days passed without event, for which Javin was thankful. The smaller ships were evacuated and stripped before being left to drift into the night. The cylons continued to focus on the planetary bodies and the larger asteroid belts, seeming content to ignore the outer reaches. Scout missions came back with news of further nuclear strikes, this time tactical range warheads. Javin had the grim suspicion that they were seeing the final end of any ground resistance, at least of an organized nature. The repairs on the _Intolerant_ were more or less completed, and with that his last excuse to leave.

_And we haven't seen another living soul for the last 3 days. They're either far away from here or hiding deep in the asteroid belts or maybe the Oort cloud, and we'll never find them. Time enough to go. When the last raptors return… we head for Prolmar._

Javin leaned back in his chair as the raptors docked. Finally there was only one left, but when it appeared, the pilot urgently signaled the flagship.

"They say they found surviving refugees." Wilma said.

"Put me on," Javin said. "You found survivors?"

"Yes sir…but they need help. Their ships have been stripped," The pilot sounded disturbed. "But not by cylons— they were boarded by marines from a battlestar…the _Pegasus…_"

As the pilot continued his report, Javin felt ill. _Conscripting labor after shooting their families?_ _Leaving them to die?_ He shook his head. Being horrified could wait.

"Order the fleet to make jump preparations. We'll evacuate the civilians from their ships and leave this region of space."

"Yes sir," Wilma replied and started the preparations.

_You may have forgotten your duty, but I won't forget mine,_ Javin swore to the absent battlestar.

* * *

The Scylla drifted in the night. The crying and curses had died down as the crippled environmental systems kept pouring CO2 into the air— soon enough it would reach lethal levels. The other ships huddled around the freighter, but there was no reason to take on survivors. Without FTL it would merely exchange a fast death for a slow one. Then with multiple flashes, the fleet appeared around the helpless ships.

"Civilian ships, this is Admiral Javin of the Virgon Navy," Javin said. "I have been informed of your situation and we are here to rescue you. Medical personnel are heading to your ships right now to assist in evacuating your crews and passengers to my fleet."

"We're getting signals from the ships. They're opening their airlocks…" Wilma frowned. "Several have high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. We'll have to move fast."

"We will. I want to leave as quickly as possible."

"The Empress is on the line, sir." The rating gestured at the indicator.

_What does she-_"Typhon Actual here."

"I've been informed of what the _Pegasus _did," Celea's voice was cold. "Are we going to track the ship down?"

"A _Mercury _class battlestar is not something I would enjoy fighting…"

"It is a battlestar under Admiral Cain, is it not?"

"That is the information we have…"

"Then it is a renegade and she is a murderer…" Celea's voice dropped. "I understand your reluctance admiral, but whatever madness took her, Cain is a danger to every group of survivors that might have the misfortune to meet her. They will flee from the cylons, but they will run _to _the _Pegasus…"_

"The survival of this fleet is my main concern."

"Agreed, but do you want to risk the _Pegasus_ appearing among us, say after a battle when we are unable to resist?"

"I will take it under consideration," Javin finally said.

"Thank you."

_If they are stripping parts off of a civilian fleet…_ Javin paused. That had to mean the battlestar was damaged to a greater or lessor degree. Not to mention they were desperate enough for crew to take men onto their ship after murdering their families. Given what a single suicidal or sufficiently furious man could do to a warship, especially if he waited to choose his moment, that implied they were _very_ desperate.

_And they wouldn't know we knew about their actions._ A battlestar was dangerous, it was true, but it was only one ship, instead of a flagship sitting at the core of an escorting fleet. Javin could think of several ways he might be able to get a boarding force on board, especially if the battlestar let a few of his ships close…

_Or if we do find them, we could always have one of the civilian ships jump in, eager to join up with their "protector."_

Dangerous, but the Empress was _right._ The Pegasus would be a danger— if they were willing to murder Colonial citizens— and that was what leaving the ships without FTL amounted too, they would likely continue to do so to any other ship they met.

And more importantly, Javin, before he had joined the Virgon Navy had served in the Colonial Fleet. The Cylons had destroyed most of the fleet, but honestly there was no shame in being beaten, however much tragedy there was.

But this…this _was_ shame and dishonor. It would not be wiped away until the ship had been brought to justice and its command staff flushed out of the airlocks with a bullet in their heads.

"Captain," Javin said, turning to Wilma. "As soon as the ships are evacuated, I want to start heading to the Prolmar sector, but I also want raptors and strikers to start plotting jumps for a search pattern."

"The _Pegasus, _sir?"

"Yes."

"It's going to be very hard to find."

"Almost impossible, but we might get lucky."

_We'll have to be very lucky._ The Colonial ability to detect and localize FTL jumps depended on either being close enough to detect the gravitic pulse and other emissions or the use of vast stationary arrays that were now so much debris floating in space. On the other hand, they might get lucky.

_And at the very least, we can hopefully minimize the chance of _them _surprising us._

* * *

_The raider waited, engines shut down. The small flotilla had been detected and surrounded by a squadron of raiders, each one remaining silent. The large battlestar might return, after all. However, this fleet was an unusual datum. It was obviously organized. More importantly, there was no hope that 16 raiders would be able to destroy it. _

_So they didn't even try. Rather, they waited and soon enough the ships started to enter FTL. The raiders detected the FTL signatures, gaining data on their vector and likely length. Moments later, the fleet was gone and the raiders exploded into motion. Each raider entered FTL, its destination a basestar or the region where the fugitives were expected to appear. They would have to be tracked, as the forces in the region were currently inadequate to destroy them. However, that was not the raider's concern, and the only emotion it felt as a vague sense of disappointment, a predator deprived of its prey._

TBC


	6. Leaving the Party

_Engaging FTL capable ships can be an exercise in frustration. The fact that they can jump out, and the time it takes, even under the most favorable circumstances, to locate the enemy fleet means that, with the exception of a surprise attack on an unaware enemy, a decisive engagement is unlikely to be easy to achieve. For this reason, there are generally two strategies that are commonly employed when attempting to force a FTL capable force to engage in a decisive battle. The first is to launch an attack on a stationary base, planet or objective that must be defended. The second is to engage in an attrition based strategy. Eventually, the fugitive fleet will be rendered combat ineffective due to the gradual loss of men and material, or over stressed FTL drives will increasingly fail, forcing the fleet to either abandon large portions of its force or turn and fight. _

_It should be noted that the attrition based strategy is very hard on the attacker, usually requiring a very large margin of material superiority. _

_Chapter XV: Open Space Combat Strategies: A Handbook for Command Track Cadets_

_Caprica Press. _

* * *

"All ships ready for jump." Wilma reported as Javin kept his eyes on the CIC readouts. The fleet was ready, but the raiders continued buzzing about like angry hornets. No radiological signs, thank the gods, but even so, landing fighters during a fighting withdrawal was very difficult, to say nothing of the basestars that had just appeared. "Raptor messenger returned from the jump location— it's escorts are ready and no sign of the cylons."

"Commence civilian jump and then land our fighters and jump." Javin said as the hull rocked slightly under the impact of a missile.

The attacks had started about 48 hours after the encounter with the fleet the Pegasus had looted and they had continued ever since then. Sometimes the attack came after only a few hours, and once they'd had nearly a full day of peace. Javin wondered if the cylons were varying the time to throw the fleet off balance, or simply because it took a varying amount of time to localize them.

The problem was, the fleet, even with the most marginal civilian ships abandoned, couldn't keep up this pace forever. Most doctrines argued that while a naval ship _could_ jump dozens of times in a single day the wear on the engines and fuel were to be avoided— and civilian ships neither had the durability nor the fuel bunkerage of their military cousins. The fuel on the civilian craft was dropping alarmingly.

"Preparing for FTL jump." Moments later, the odd twisting sensation ran through Javin and the ships emerged into empty space. He watched the fighter icons multiply as the pocket carriers launched their CAPs.

_Made up of pilots who will be getting increasingly fatigued…_

"How many did we lose?"

A moment passed, and Wilma sighed. "Six pilots, 4 fighters damaged to heavily to fight again."

_That makes nearly 20 over the last week._

_"_We need to find a way to break contact."

"You think they're just following us?"

"The pattern indicates it-" Javin gestured at the CIC screen. "Repeat the last engagement high speed." Wilma nodded.

"See, first there are fighters, englobing us, but not in large numbers. Then more, and finally the basestars. They can track us, but I think it has more to do with superior FTL tracking technology than anything else, and they still obviously have to cover a wide area— the raiders that detect our emergency report back to the basestar while the closest raider group jumps in— depending on how accurate they are…that defines how much time we have."

"That doesn't help us much…" Wilma muttered. "_Mt. Jakes _and _Dreaming Paradise_ reported that they're showing nasty harmonics in their drives and some ships are running low on fuel."

"Agreed. We can't just keep beating them off… We have to hurt the cylons badly enough to give us time to break contact."

"How do we do that?"

"By taking a risk. The next jump, I want to go to one of the emergency sites, _then_ jump to another site."

"I'll detail scouts-"

"With no scouts."

"Sir… if the Cylons are waiting…"

"They'll do damage, but if they are tracking us, even the raptors' and cutters' FTL signature might be helping them. We'll jump, trust to the gods and ensure that they don't have that initial warning."

"But the fleet-"

"The cylons will have more to worry about than the fleet. Now here's what we're going to do…"

* * *

"They've engaged our raiders," A Three reported. The Six in charge of the basestar taskgroup nodded.

"Are they jumping out?"

"No. Raiders are reporting that several ships appear to be drifting…civilian ships." The Three's look was predatory. "They must have suffered FTL failures."

"And the warships aren't jumping?"

"No."

"_Finally_," Six breathed. It didn't matter if they had enough to kill the warships— just damage them enough to slow them down. They could be resupplied. The humans couldn't— the more they were damaged, the slower they would be…until…

"God's will," she finally breathed. "And we're close enough to join the battle quickly— all Basestars jump."

"Preparing for the slaughter, the children of man will return to their parents, all FTL drives aligned and ready, initiating jump." The hybrid said in its normal mixture of nonsense and information.

* * *

The flagship rocked with another hit. The damage was minor, as yet, but more and more raiders were joining the party. Javin gritted his teeth, looking at the increasingly confused scrum developing around the perimeter of the fleet.

_You know we can't just leave our fighters so this is the perfect time to bring in your big ships and finish it. Be a good little toaster and take the bait…_

_"_Emergence!" Wilma said. "Three-no, _four_ basestars, multiple supporting ships. They've launched their onboard raider complements. Time to convoy, 1 minute 30 seconds…sir, are you certain?"

"Sometimes… we have to take the risk." Javin told the captain. "All ships… Execute Bloody Nose…now!"

* * *

"What are they doing?" the Three asked.

Six couldn't answer. The _cruisers_ and the support battlestar were moving between the other ships and the oncoming wall of raiders, but the other ships weren't. What were they-There was a telltale flash of FTL from the flagships.

Six was still wondering what their plan was when the basestar rang like a gong.

"Accurate emergence!" the navigator shouted.

"All ships, engage!" Javin said. Virgon Prime and _Imperator Typhon_ were the two most heavily armed ships but the four pocket carriers also carried powerful weapons. Now each ship was turned broadside to the cylon warships, unloading every weapon into the shocked pursuers.

"Sir, the cylon raiders are turning back!" Wilma shouted.

_Foolish. You could have done more damage by continuing on to the fleet._ That had been Javin's true worry, but now he smiled. By turning their back, the cruisers, battlestar and other escorts had perfect shots at the raiders, to say nothing of the vipers and other combat craft that were now tearing into them.

"Good hits on the main basestar!" gunnery shouted and Javin looked up just in time to see one of the lead basestar's "arms" explode.

"Good, shift gunnery to the undamaged enemy ships."

"But sir, we can kill them-"

"That is not our objective.

* * *

The basestar control center was a hell of exploding electrical equipment, the hybrid screaming nonsense words. Six looked at the readout and saw that one of the basestars was drifting, dead. The other three, including hers, were heavily damaged, only surviving because the humans seemed to have assumed their firepower was greater than it actually had been. Now they were directing their fire on the lighter support ships. Cylon warships had never been as heavily armed as Colonial ships, as befitted their origin as repurposed mining craft. Even the new generation basestars were supposed to fight at arms length, with missiles and raiders. But now they were in a battleline engagement.

"The raiders have lost over half their number!" Three shouted.

"It's still enough-"

The basestar lurched again. "We've lost life support and raider repair facilities on level 22, massive fuel leaks, fires…"

"I-" Then Six blinked. The human fighters were curving back, piling into the battlestar's multiple hanger bays and the other ships. "What-"

"FTL detected…" Three said and Six watched as the ships pounding her task force started to vanish, one by one. The rest of the fleet did the same, the supposedly damaged ships reorienting themselves and jumping out, leaving the field bare of anything but the odd human corpse and damaged cylon ships.

* * *

Javin decided to go more than two jumps. Without pausing to bring the fighters back to their home ships from the battlestar, he ordered that fully six jumps be made, taking the risk of merely surveying the site with a single raptor to minimize any possible pre-warning. Finally, he ordered the fleet stopped, moving into an asteroid belt on sublight thrusters. Granted, the belts were far from what fiction directed them as, but they still provided a certain amount of clutter for long-range sensors.

"Do you think we lost them sir?"

"I don't know. Hopefully yes." Javin replied. "I-"

"Sir, cutter flight three has reported back— they've found a ship."

"Another refugee?"

"Negative sir. They state that the ship appears to be derelict and conforms to no known cylon or Colonial design pattern…"

"Dispatch a recovery team— no vipers. Just raptors and a cutter. If it's a trap, I don't want any sublight only craft caught beyond our landing bays."

"Yes sir."

_Now what is it we've found, I wonder…_

* * *

God must be punishing her, Six thought. The relief force had been led by a One.

"Nice to see how well you've taken care of the forces under your command…" One said with his trademark sarcasm. "We've lost what…400 raiders, six cruisers…and for what? Oh yes, 40 fighter pilots."

"We can replace our losses."

"Oh sure, we can. After the fighters have been produced at the Colony, shipped here and…oh wait, we can't. Why can't we? Because the raiders support ships are mostly disabled and you neglected to ensure that the scouts were out so we have no _FRAKKING_ idea where the Colonials got to!"

"They didn't get everything— the fleet survived."

"They _wanted_ the fleet to survive." One snarled. "Didn't it surprise you that the only ships destroyed were the the little ones— the ones that might be accidentally destroyed? They didn't have enough firepower to destroy you, much as it might have helped the cylon cause, but they did have enough to disable every warship and let them break contact while _I _had to race to your salvation! It's not like there aren't other survivors out there, you know, the frakking _Galactica_ and her fleet?"

_What is it with the Ones and Galactica? It's not even the largest fleet out there, but they focus on it like there were no other survivors…_

"So what do we do?"

"You wait here and try to not frak things up any worse. I'm going to have to pull some of the escorts off the resurrection ship."

"Isn't that…"

"I'm not planning on parking it close enough for the Colonials to get the data they need for a close range jump with a battlestar. Unlike _you_ I think about these things. If it sees so much as a raptor, it jumps. Once you get your ships fixed…presuming that's not beyond your undoubted military genius, we'll join those forces— 8 basestars and support should be enough to finish this lot off."

"Very well," Six said, grinding her teeth. God, she hated the Ones…

* * *

Michael Toombs had received many jokes about his name in school, so it was only fitting that he name his cutter _The Tomb. _Cutters were much larger than a raptor, capable of detached operations running up to several weeks and with numerous hardpoints for everything from missile pods to EW gear. The cargo section could even be refitted to carry bombs, missiles or passengers in a variety of configurations. More expensive than raptors, they were still highly useful for long-distance and duration duties that didn't need a larger ship.

"You ready for the approach, Rose?" He called. His weapons officer nodded.

"Ready here skip!" Under her sure hands the cutters forward weapons and missiles were hot while the two ratings who worked for her kept the dorsal and ventral turrets trained on the ship that was getting larger, and later in the forward cockpit.

"Big sucker…bout the size of a Colonial heavy," He muttered to himself. "Flag, this is Toombs, I'm approaching the craft— appears to be roughly the size of a Colonial heavy freighter."

"Understood. Any markings?"

Toombs turned the big floodlights on, playing them over the ship. "Negative— but there is _extensive_ micrometeor wear on the outer hull and what looks to be actual penetrations from larger meteors…" He looked down at the sensor readings being relayed to him from the sensor operator's console. "Temperature is equal to the nearby asteroid bodies, indicating that there has been no active life support or internal energy source for a while." _While hell. I can feel it. That thing is old._

"Can the team enter the craft?" The admiral's voice came ovr the wireless.

"I think so— there are several large gaps…" Toombs didn't even bother to suggest trying to find a hatch. If the thing was as old as he thought, vacuum welding would have sealed them shut long ago.

"Deploy your team— they are to retreat at any sign of cylons or other danger. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir."

* * *

Sergeant Allya Lakin had become a boarding specialist for the most prosaic of reasons. It gave her more money every month, increased the chance of getting a post where you did more than polish guns and run marine drill in a ship for six months at a time and also had a really nice qualification badge that was good in the bar. Well, she was going to be on the ship for a lot longer than six months, the bar was so much radioactive dust, and for the foreseeable future extra money probably wasn't going to mean much.

_Oh well, at least the badge still looks nice. _

"We're at one of the gaps."

'Understood."

Entering a ship ws a study in trade offs. Sending a wireguided robot ahead first was risky— some pirates had booby traps that would detect the wire. Autonomous robots… well the navy had never allowed them after the cylon war. If they'd only protected their fraking computers the same way… Of course going in yourself was a good way to get killed, but…

The light played over the rents, which looked oddly like a cross between kenetic and thermal damage. Blobs of hull mateial looked like it had been melted and then froze, but to do it that fast…

"There look to be big arc weld signs here."

"It was in a shipyard…"

"No…not really. It looks more… I dunno." _I am not going to be the first one to scream RAYGUNS!_

"I'm in wht looks like a corridor forward. She brushed some of the long accumulated dust that had come in through the rent off what looked like a plaque. The symbols… "I have some symbols, but they're not in any writing I've ever seen. I'm sending the images to you." She paused, "Continuing forward…"

Moments later, she was in the front— the forward door looked…

"Flag, it looks like the forward pressure door was blown off its hinges. Like ah… like a hijacking back home."

"Understood."

Through the door, Lakin frowned. It looked prosaic. The seats looked like they were for humans, and the forward screens for all they were almost completely obscured reminded her of the big vision ports most civilian spacecraft had. Of course no military craft had them, but civilians liked the idea of the captain looking out of the window, even if it was hardly ever useful.

"I am moving forward…looks like a-" Then Lakin turned around. "Lords of Lobol!"

"What is it sergeant!"

"I…" Lakin looked into the faceplate of the pressure suited figure strapped into the main seat. A mummified face grinned out at her. "I found at least one crewmember. Deceased."

"Condition? What killed the crewmember?"

"I can't tell…but it's a mummy…"

_And dry. This ship is old…so how did it get all the way out here?_

TBC.


	7. Long-lost Relations

_One odd factor about both the Colonial's and the Cylon Empire was the general lack of curiosity they expressed in the rest of the universe. While the Twelve Colonies had explored beyond their home worlds, that exploration was desultory and in fact did not extend much more than 100 light years beyond their home worlds— even though their FTL systems were capable of opening a substantial part of the Galaxy to exploration. Save for the odd eccentric, corporation or government project, the vast majority of the galaxy remained unexplored. _

_Staying in the Crib: The Twelve Colonies and the Failure of Interstellar Expansion. _

_University of California, Riverside Press_

* * *

"Who could it be?" Javin asked. They had decided, after verifying that the ship was completely powerless and dead to bring it on board the _Intolerant's_ port landing bay. For now, they were keeping the bay in vacuum, the spacesuited deck crews going over the ship, bouncing around in the 1/4 standard gravity. Parts of the ship were very delicate and Javin feared it wouldn't survive full gravity.

"Not anyone from the Colonies…"

Javin turned at the voice. "You have information, Professor?"

_Professor._ Well, they had to work with who they had, even if he was no Baltar. The _Reliant_ had been a liner once before, but Javin had discovered once he'd finished the reports sent in that it was now very much a tramp liner, moving along the asteroid belts, and including services the miners and lonely outposts might need, which included a small school that provided certification and credentialing services for teens who were unable or unwilling to attend onworld schools. Given the nature of the asteroid belt communities, the faculty, all 8 of them, were mostly science instructors, including Professor Otano Crabbs.

_Unfortunately, the good professor was unlikely to be out here for no other reason than love… _Many workers in the asteroid belts were avoiding…issues that might come up in more settled reasons and the professor was unlikely to be an exception. Still, all of the tenured and high quality candidates were likely dead in the rubble of their schools.

Ignorant of Javin's thoughts, the professor gestured at the ship. "We've examined it and micrometeorid damage and erosion is extensive. The power source is an advanced thorium based reactor…and presuming that our tests are at all accurate, the ship has probably been drifting for at least 50,000 years.

Captain Reese tensed. "That's…long before Kobol."

"That's long before anything we have record of."

_After all, when our ancestors came to the Colonies only kept a few things. Records of the world before Kobol… weren't among them. I wonder why?_ _A conscious decision? Something forced upon them?_

"And the body?"

"Ah…" the professor paused, trying to conceal some distaste. "The Empress is with the medical team looking at the body, though I hardly think she's suited-"

"She might surprise you. After all, she was working on a degree in ecological engineering, so she knows how to handle a test tube."

"She's hardly of age-"

"If she can help, she is of age. All of us are." Javin coldly said. "We may be all that is left of humanity— so from now on, the only question about a persons duties— or what help they offer us will be can they deliver. I think the Empress can."

_And what you don't need to know is I've known Celea from birth so there is absolutely no chance she's a Cylon…cultist? Sympathizer?_ Javin didn't know, but if any existed in the fleet, the information they were seeking now would be extremely important to them.

* * *

"The DNA is fracked up all to hell," The _Intolerant's _chief medical officer muttered.

"We should be happy the suit retained any pressure," Celea said. She had been surprised when Javin had called her over, but his quick explanation had made sense. Doctor Blair had frowned at her at first but had warmed to her, perhaps because Celea had simply followed his instructions, trying to take samples off the mummified flesh for the gene sequencer. Sadly, most of the samples were coming back as too degraded to obtain any read on them. The pilot had apparently died from a single stab found through the suit, although the suit had evidently sealed itself— more or less.

Looking at the corpse in the biocontainment pod the battlestar had in stock for infectious disease victims, Celea frowned. _I wonder why you died? Was it some glorious rivalry that could only end in death? A tawdry fight over guns or lovers or money? A casual murder at the hands of people who didn't even know your name?_ A pinging sound from the sequencer brought her around.

"Here we go!" Moments later, Doctor Blair frowned. "Well that _is_ interesting…"

* * *

The briefing room of the _Intolerant _was crowded. Although technically both Celea and Javin could have claimed the head of the table, he asked Captain Reese to chair the meeting, making it clear that the Colonial forces were allies, not subordinates.

"It's been about 48 hours and while our results are preliminary, I think they're enough to make some conclusions," Reese stated. "The engineers agree— with some exceptions, the ship is about equal to a modern colonial vessel."

"What exceptions?" Javin asked, more for the benefit of others than himself.

"First of all, the ship uses a very advanced thorium reactor design— such things were used in the Colonies but were largely displaced by other power sources so we never gained this level of advancement. It would produce less energy than our reactors, but do so for a very long time— we estimate that presuming a similar energy usage to one of our cargo vessels, this ship could probably go about 10 years between refueling.

"In fact," Professor Crabbs broke in, "There appears to be no way to refuel the engine— we think that it would simply be removed and a new engine emplaced as part of the overhaul process. In addition, the FTL unit appears to be about 10 percent smaller than standard Colonial designs, although we have no way to verify its range."

"What about the damage?"

"That is interesting— and I agree with the entry specialist— it appears to be damage from energy weapons."

_Well._ Javin leaned back. Energy weapons had been the holy grail of Colonial R&D for years— not so much for the potential damage, but the potential accuracy and the fact that a ship with energy weapons would use energy for ammo, dramatically simplifying the issue of combat resupply. But they had never worked— put simply, you _could_ make an energy weapon that could do as much damage as a heavy KEW battery…but it would weigh ten times as much, be ten times as touchy, and was very vulnerable to ships deploying clouds of sand or other refractive materials. Evidently, this group had solved that problem.

"The pilot?"

"Female, unknown age— 50,000 years doesn't leave a lot, even as a mummy," Blair said. "But we did get enough DNA to do a slight comparison with our own Colonial DNA and this person has no signs that she, or any of her ancestors, had a connection with Colonial humanity."

"Is anything on the ship usable?" Javin finally asked.

"Now? No. Later…" Crabbs shrugged. "The computer was almost completely destroyed, but we were able to recover what appear to be physical star maps. Perhaps a backup."

"And can you decipher them?"

Crabbs frowned. "Maybe. Star maps operate on mathematical principles and those are more or less universal. We can try."

"What are you thinking, Admiral?" Celea asked.

"50,000 years is very long for us…very long for a civilization…but a planet? Not so long."

"You think we could use it to find the pilot's homeworld?" Reese asked.

"Perhaps. We'll continue following along the Prolmar sector for now, but if we can decipher the map, we can at lest send a raptor to any promising locations."

"Maybe there will be people there," Reese said.

"I doubt it," Celea said quietly. "Look at how far we've advanced in only 2,000 years… after 50,000 years wouldn't they be rulers of the galaxy?"

"Maybe," Javin said. "But even if they're gone, there might be a world there, perhaps even clues to these people. Or resources we could use."

* * *

Cylon Basestar.

"You're fraking me," Six told the recently resurrected Five standing before her. "They found a non-Colonial Spaceship?"

"Yes. I was on the deck crew that was helping tear down the space ship. It's over 50,000 years old!"

"Did you get anything else before your airlocked yourself?" the One snapped.

"A little. They have a map of some kind, but they're keeping things very tight— they still think that the others were cylon sympathizers rather than actual cylons, but…"

"Yeah."

"We have a better location for them now," Six pointed out. As part of the resurrection process, the coordinates of the upload were forwarded to the basestar.

"Not good enough and we don't have enough infiltrators to tell them to kill themselves to give us a roadmap…FRAK!" The One struck the wall of the conference room.

"What's the problem…it's an _old_ ship."

"Which indicates that there were humans around a long time before Kobol." the One replied. "Who may still be around."

"Well they didn't help the Colonies," an Eight pointed out.

"No, so maybe they're gone."

"Maybe they were the Lords of Kobol."

"You believe that?" One asked.

"I'm not talking about 'gods'," the Eight replied, "but someone brought the humans to the Colonies, and someone made certain all twelve worlds were more or less habitable.

One nodded at that. The Colonies were nearly unique— not only was their DNA compatible, but it was possible to find birds on Caprica that were nearly identical to birds on Leonis, and their origin far predated the arrival of the Colonials.

"Maybe, but if so, well, if their 'gods' didn't hear their cries when we were burning their children-" Six winced that that. "-they're not likely to intervene now." One looked at the others. "But for now, let's try and localize their position, but not attack…I want to see what they lead us to."

TBC

* * *

**Author's notes:**

Meeting "Galactica?"

I don't normally spoil, but I also don't want to pull a "bait and switch" on readers, so after some consideration, this group isn't going to meet the Galactica. The reason is two fold: 1. I have a different idea for them and you start having to have a lot of odd coincidences to get the two together.

2. The fleet is too big— 30K civilians, plus a fleet of warships and support craft makes it an opening question of who is joining who, and if the fleets meet it shouldn't turn into Adama and Co tagging along with these OCs. I do have a thought about a group encountering the galactica but if I write it, the group will be small enough (or have other problems) where it's more them joining the fleet (even if they're very useful) than just moving on in and displacing the main characters. I've not decided whether such a group would include a battlestar or just smaller ships since the idea is rather far in the future at this point.


End file.
